


Between the moons and midnights

by swallowthewhale



Series: Killervibe Week [23]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Chance Meetings, F/M, Meet-Cute, Mild Blood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:20:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25979644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swallowthewhale/pseuds/swallowthewhale
Summary: Its 2:17 am and Cisco is sitting in his underwear behind the last row of washers at the Get the Funk Out laundromat.Killervibe Week 2020: Chance Meeting/Meet Cute
Relationships: Cisco Ramon/Caitlin Snow
Series: Killervibe Week [23]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/752097
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18
Collections: Killervibedaily Events





	Between the moons and midnights

Its 2:17 am and Cisco is sitting in his underwear behind the last row of washers at the Get the Funk Out laundromat. It’s the only 24-hour laundromat on his block, and also the one with the best name, so despite the grimy seats and the dryers’ tendency to eat his socks, Cisco is here for emergency laundry. He hadn’t _meant_ to spill engine grease all over himself, but the damage was done, and to make matters worse, he was literally in his last set of clean clothes.

Luckily, no one else seems to need to do emergency laundry after midnight and so there’s no one there to see Cisco perched on a chair in Batman boxers while he glumly watches the washer spin.

Then he immediately curses himself for jinxing it when the bell over the front door jingles. He hunches down, but, of course, the newcomer heads straight for the back row of washers where he’s hiding. The woman - pretty, Cisco notes absently - looks at him for a long moment before quirking her eyebrow in amusement and turning to a free machine. Cisco watches out of the corner of his eye as she loads her clothes in. Then a big splash of dark red catches his eye and he looks back over to see this woman loading clothes _covered_ in blood into the washer. And not, like, normal amounts of blood. Not like, oh I cut myself blood. Murder levels of blood. _Psychopath_ levels. What the fuck?

She continues to ignore him and a few minutes later Cisco’s washer beeps and he gratefully moves his clothes across the room to the dryers, where he can sit with a good view of both the maybe-serial killer and the door. He keeps his phone in hand too, just in case.

But the woman just sits down and opens up a book and reads calmly while her machine runs. It occurs to Cisco now that she looks vaguely familiar, but he can’t quite place it. He’s also sure he doesn’t know anyone who would ever get that much blood on their clothes. He muses over it while he waits for the dryer, then happily gets dressed when it buzzes.

The woman moves over to him again while he’s folding clothes into his basket and picks a dryer a few down from him.

Cisco could blame many things for what happens next. Exhaustion, boredom, sheer curiosity. But whatever it is that makes him open his stupid mouth, he still asks, “You’re not, like, a murderer or something, right?”

She looks over at him, both eyebrows raised and a smirk playing at her mouth. “Would I tell you if I was?”

Cisco blushes. “I mean, all the blood…”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m a doctor.”

“Well, okay,” Cisco fumbles. “But that was, like, a _lot_ of blood. Like a whole person’s worth.”

She laughs and rolls her eyes, turning to face him. “It was a very survivable amount of blood. I do wish I had been wearing scrubs though, I really liked that shirt.”

Cisco, now sure that she’s only 65% likely to be a murderer instead of 95%, asks, “What happened?”

She continues loading her dryer. “Stab wound nicked an artery.” She glances up at Cisco. “It was just outside Jitters, not at the hospital, hence the…” she gestures at her clothes.

“Gotcha,” Cisco says, feeling a little faint at the thought of that much blood and the matter-of-fact way she describes it.

“What about you?” She asks.

Cisco frowns. “What?”

She giggles. “Is it normal for you to sit in your underpants while you do laundry, then?”

“Oh!” Cisco groans. “There was a spill and I’ve been putting off laundry so all my clothes were already dirty.” He tucks his hair behind his ears self-consciously. “I didn’t think there’d be anyone here to see me.”

“So you didn’t intend to be that weird guy who sits naked in 24-hour laundromats?” She teases. “Good to know.”

“Definitely not,” Cisco says hastily. “I usually do my laundry fully clothed, at a normal time of day.”

“Hmm,” she says, eyeing him slyly. “Not that I _minded_.”

Cisco hides his burning face behind the dryer door as he reaches in for the last few socks. He drops them in his basket and hoists it onto his hip. “Um, well, good luck with the blood stains.”

She smiles and gives him a cute little half-wave, half-salute. “See you around, maybe.”

Cisco is struck again by the familiarity but he shakes it out of his mind. “Bye.”

Then he hurries home and puts the whole strange encounter out of his mind.

Or, well, he _means_ to forget about the pretty woman washing bloody clothes at two in the morning, but… Well, now he knows why she was so familiar.

It turns out that not only is Get the Funk Out both of their preferred laundromat, they also always seem to be in there at the same time. Not that Cisco hasn’t noticed her before, but his brain hadn’t quite connected the cute girl who always reads romance novels two feet down the bench from him every Saturday morning to the woman with bloody clothes and a wicked smirk. He’ll just blame it on exhaustion.

He still doesn’t know her name.

* * *

Here’s the thing. Cisco loves his job at Palmer Tech. He has the freedom to pick and choose the projects he works on and the flexibility to come and go on whatever schedule works for him. So sometimes Cisco works a normal nine-to-five job, collaborating with his coworkers on cool tech, and sometimes he forges off on his own weird side projects that keep him in his workshop until nearly four in the morning when the building is quiet so he can hear himself think without being constantly asked to help with something or the other.

It’s on nights like these that Cisco does stupid things like take on a complex repair project for his lathe, cut his hand badly, and nearly sprint down the street to the 24-hour emergency clinic with a dirty shop rag wrapped around his bloody hand.

All eyes turn to him as he bursts into the clinic waiting room. He hardly notices the few bedraggled people sitting on plastic chairs now staring at him, or the calm nurse at the front desk who’s peeling back the rag to replace it with gauze, or the pain as the nurse puts pressure on the cut. Cisco’s eyes are fixed to the familiar face poking her head out of a door at the commotion. He can tell she recognizes him from the way her mouth quirks into a half smile before settling back into a suitably serious expression, and the doctor from the laundromat hurries over to help the nurse guide him to an empty room.

The nurse helps him settle on the examination table and guides Cisco to put pressure on the cut before leaving the room and closing the door behind her.

The doctor smiles at him as she pulls gloves on. “I’m Doctor Snow,” she says, holding out a gloved hand to take Cisco’s and pull away the gauze. “How did this happen?”

“Repairs on a machine in my shop,” Cisco says, wincing as she prods at the edge of the cut. “Probably not a good idea to do those in the middle of the night,” he jokes lamely.

Dr. Snow grins at him. “Probably not,” she agrees. She tilts his hand back and forth under a magnifying glass on a goose neck, then seeming satisfied, turns to gather more gauze and an antiseptic. “Good news is that there doesn’t seem to be anything that needs removing. And it’s not so deep that you’ll need stitches.” She fixes him with a stern look. “But next time, try to find a _clean_ cloth to use?”

Cisco flushes. “Sorry, doc.”

Dr. Snow rolls her eyes good-humoredly and briskly cleans and bandages the cut. “Give it some rest, change the bandages every day, come back if there’s any swelling or inflammation.”

“Okay,” Cisco says.

“Why do I have a feeling you’re going straight back to work?” She asks wryly, stripping off her gloves into the biohazard bin.

“I’m not!” Cisco splutters, even though he absolutely _was_ going to.

“Mm-hmm,” she says, smiling at him anyway. “Be careful out there,” she says, opening the door for him.

Dr. Snow vanishes down the hallway as Cisco makes his way to the front desk to pay. He keeps an eye out hopefully for her, but she only pops her head through the door behind the desk to hand a folder to the nurse before waving briefly and disappearing again.

Cisco slumps. He has some half thought-through notion of asking for her number, or her _name_ , which he still hasn’t caught.

It’s not until he’s back in his apartment, checking through the visit summary, that he spots a handwritten note at the bottom of the last page:

_440-502-0152_

_In case you need a hand with any late-night laundry_

_-Caitlin_


End file.
